This case involves a proposed class action by plaintiff Stevens against corporate commodities brokers and defendant Ness, alleging that funds deposited for futures trading were wrongfully commingled, used for unauthorized transactions, and churned, resulting in losses exceeding $150,000 for the plaintiff and similar losses for about 90 other unsophisticated investors, in violation of the Commodity Exchange Act and federal securities laws. The court granted the defendants' motion to dismiss the class allegations and the securities law claims. It reasoned that class treatment under Rule 23(b)(3) was inappropriate because individual issues of fact—such as varying representations by Ness, different customer agreements, specific transactions, and reliance—predominated over common ones, citing precedents like Moscarelli v. Stamm on oral misrepresentations and churning. The court further held that the discretionary trading accounts were not "securities" under the 1933 and 1934 Acts because they lacked the required "common enterprise" under the Howey test, as customers had not authorized pooling of funds.
This case involves a probation revocation proceeding against the defendant, initiated by the U.S. Attorney at the request of the Probation Office. The court decided that no preliminary hearing before a magistrate was required, vacating its prior order reassigning the case and returning it for final disposition by the district judge. The core reasoning is that Supreme Court precedents in Gagnon v. Scarpelli and Morrissey v. Brewer mandate a preliminary hearing only when a probationer or parolee has been arrested and incarcerated before the revocation decision, as this protects conditional liberty interests; here, no arrest occurred, and the rule to show cause process does not deprive the defendant of liberty.
The case involved defendant Hedgeman's motion to suppress an oral statement he made to FBI agents while in custody after his arrest on an indictment. The court granted the motion to suppress. Hedgeman had been arrested at home, contacted his attorney who instructed him not to speak to the agents, and was advised of his rights but refused to sign a waiver form. Despite this and the attorney's efforts to meet him, agents took him to an FBI office, processed him, and interrogated him after partial rights warnings, leading him to make incriminating statements. The court found that the statement was not wholly voluntary and that Hedgeman had not voluntarily, knowingly, and intelligently waived his constitutional rights, particularly given the agents' knowledge of his counsel and use of custody to keep him separated from his lawyer.
This case involved a tort claim by intervenor-plaintiff D. H. Overmyer Co., Inc. (Ohio) against defendant Cormat Construction Co. (Illinois) for damages from allegedly negligent construction work on property owned by Overmyer's Illinois subsidiary. After the original contractor's suit against Cormat settled, Cormat moved to dismiss the intervenor's complaint for lack of subject-matter jurisdiction, arguing insufficient diversity of citizenship. The court granted the motion and dismissed the complaint, holding that the subsidiary's assignment of its claim to the Ohio parent was made collusively to create federal diversity jurisdiction. Under 28 U.S.C. § 1359 and Miller & Lux v. East Side Canal & Irrigation Co., such assignments between a parent and its wholly owned subsidiary are treated as improper when done to invoke federal court jurisdiction, as the entities are effectively controlled by the same stockholders who can reassign the claim at will.
This case was brought by the Secretary of Labor under the Labor-Management Reporting and Disclosure Act challenging the validity of a union constitutional rule requiring candidates for local officer positions to have attended at least half of regular meetings over the prior 36 months. The parties resolved other election issues by agreement, leaving only the question of whether the meeting-attendance rule had been properly protested through internal union procedures as required before the Secretary could sue. The court found that the complaining member's written protest did not challenge the rule's validity, that the issue was not properly raised at the relevant union meeting, and therefore the exhaustion prerequisite was not satisfied. Although the opinion observed that the rule would likely be invalid under Supreme Court precedent because it rendered over 94 percent of members ineligible, judgment was entered for the defendant union.
The case involved retail credit card customers of Cities Service Oil Company suing under the Truth in Lending Act for alleged failure to disclose required credit information on monthly statements from July through December 1969, seeking to represent a class of about 680,000 cardholders and recover statutory damages. The court granted the defendant's motion to disallow the class action, finding that the size of the proposed class combined with the minimum $100 recovery per transaction would impose potentially annihilating punishment unrelated to actual harm, especially where violations were at most technical. It denied the cross-motions for summary judgment because a genuine issue of material fact existed as to whether the defendant had taken bona fide steps prior to the Act's July 1, 1969 effective date to obtain the necessary compliant forms under the transition period provision of Regulation Z, and ordered a trial limited to that issue.